PHP: Correct regular expression for making every letter left of the first colon lowercase

Question

$value='x-Cem-Date:Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:42:28 GMT';

Right now I have:

$value = preg_replace('/(^.+)(?=:)/e', "strtolower('\\1')", $value);

this outputs

$value='x-cem-date:wed, 16 dec 2009 15:42:28 GMT';

it should output:

$value='x-cem-date:Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:42:28 GMT';

Answer 1

You might consider using explode() and implode() instead of a regular expression.

$value_a = explode( ':', $value );
$value_a[0] = strtolower( $value_a[0] );
$value = implode( ':', $value_a );

Answer 2

Your regular expression should be as follows:

/(^.+?)(?=:)/

The difference is the +? character. The +? is non-greedy, meaning that it will find the LEAST amount of characters until the expression moves onto the next match in the expression, instead of the MOST characters until the next match.

Answer 3

Try

preg_replace('/([\w-]+?)(:[\w\d\s\:\,]+)/e', "strtolower('\\1') . '\\2'", $value);

It works on the example you posted, at least.

Answer 4

Just for information, this is the version using preg_replace_callback

$value='x-Cem-Date:Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:42:28 GMT';

function callback($text){return(strtolower($text[0]));}

echo preg_replace_callback("/^([^:]+:)/","callback",$value);

output

x-cem-date:Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:42:28 GMT

Answer 5

echo preg_replace('~^[^:]+~e', 'strtolower("$0")', $value);

Answer 6

Try your regular expression with a match

$value='x-Cem-Date:Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:42:28 GMT';
$value = preg_match('/(^.+)(?=:)/e', $value, $matches); 
print_r ($matches) . "\n";

This should output

Array
(
 [0] => x-Cem-Date:Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:42
 [1] => x-Cem-Date:Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:42
)

Try this instead

$value='x-Cem-Date:Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:42:28 GMT';
$value = preg_replace('/(^.+?:)/e', "strtolower('\\1')", $value); 
echo $value . "\n";

The ? is in there so the regex isn't greedy and grabbing more than it should.